The Beginning Makes All The Difference
by Alchemist Astrid
Summary: Stalkers, wierdos, giant bugs, talking plants... Have I been punked? Sinnoh is about to be turned inside out by one brand new trainer... who knows absolutely nothing about Pokemon! Part 1 of the All The Difference chronicals. Based off of DS Pearl.


Finally, after several embarrassing hours of having a part of the crew missing in action, as well as having a majority of the passengers running off, they were ready to be on their way once again.

The three shady passengers did not return, but perhaps that was for the best.

What mattered was that the crew was reassembled, most of the passengers were back safe and sound, and the tracks were pronounced ready for travel. At the end of the day, that was all that really mattered.

Now all that was left were the customs.

The man looked out the front window and beheld the colored light. "Green light: Confirmed."

While still looking forward, the conductor addressed one of the more important members of the train crew. "Alright, Ampharos; Thunderbolt."

The very tall Pokémon of light smiled and started to gather yellow bolts of electricity around its seed-shaped, antenna-like ears. When enough was gathered, with a sound coming forth from the throat that sounded like a mixture of purring and a whirring motor, the electricity sprang forward and then traveled straight downward. The concentration of electricity struck its target, which was an antenna attached to the dashboard. The more electricity the antenna absorbed, the more the gage just to the left of the antenna filled.

Once the thunderbolt was completely absorbed, the gage halted at the half-way mark. And the train came to life around them with a whirr.

"Thunderbolt: Confirmed." The conductor then pushed the lever that determines the train's direction of travel forward. "And off we go!"

As through the train heard him, it slowly began to move forward on its tracks.

Within the first passenger train car, three friends and two Pokémon sat quietly until the train started going.

One of the passengers, a ten-year-old girl with blue hair and an off white beanie turned to her two male companions with a smile. "It sure is great to be moving again."

The blue Pokémon seated on her left, a piplup, chirped in agreement with her.

The brown haired and bronze skinned boy sitting across from her nodded his agreement and then turned to the last of their group. "Now it looks like we'll be able to reach the Pokémon center just in time for your match."

The final member, a boy with spiky black hair partially tamed by a red and black hat with a blue symbol on it, grinned. "Awesome!" He stood up. "I can't wait to battle against Paul!"

The little yellow Pikachu that was seated on the bronze boy's left piped in his mutual excitement.

"Oh, I see," said a voice.

With confusion on their faces, the five of them turned to behold the dark-haired man in the trench coat, vest, and tie that had shared bentos with all of them simply because he had bought too many. "You're having a Pokémon battle at Lake Acuity, huh? Excellent!"

The man then started walking away while holding his hands behind his back in a relaxed manner. "You all make sure you enjoy your youth!" And with that said, he laughed heartedly.

The five blinked and then looked at one another as though to say, "What was that about?" even if nothing was said.

Meanwhile, the moment that the man stepped out of the train car to the walkway between that car and the car directly behind it, he dropped his carefree expression. Gone was the bumbling man that bought too many lunches (much as he tried to deny it earlier); no, this was a man on a mission.

He reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a mobile phone. He pressed "2", and "talk", and then brought the phone up to his left ear.

The dial tone was heard only once before someone responded on the other end. _Hello?_ a friendly voice answered.

"This is Codename: The Looker, designation-0312. Reporting," he intoned. "Team Galactic is actively working, after all. It appears they transported something to Lake Acuity using the rail system."

There was a pause on the other side of the line. The formerly friendly voice then responded in kind with a similar intone. _…Stand by, 0312._

It was only a moment later that he heard a man's tenor. _Report, Agent Looker._

Immediately, the agent stood at attention, even if the person on the other side of the phone line could not see him. "Sir! It is just as The Traveler said; not only has Team Galactic returned, but they have already begun mobilizing. They had taken control of the region's rail system under our very noses. And my gut tells me that this is only the beginning. If Traveler's reports are all accurate, then the operations involving the remake of the world have also already been put into effect."

_…This is indeed grave news._ There was a static filled pause. _Has The Traveler reported in anything else?_

"Not that I am aware of, Sir."

_I see. What is the position of The Traveler, now?_

Looker winced. "Unknown, Sir."

_Unknown?_ The man did not sound pleased.

Looker tugged on the collar of his coat. "All due respect, Chief, The Traveler has been known to travel a lot. Finding The Traveler could take some time; time that we might not have."

Another pause. _…Just make sure he is found as soon as possible. We will need as many pairs of eyes on the outside as we can get… We allowed Team Galactic's actions to go too far the first time, and it almost cost us everything; we cannot allow them to get that far again. They must be stopped _now.

Looker nodded his agreement. "Yes, sir."

_Do not relent in your investigation. We will need your eyes for this, at the very least._

Looker nodded and reached into his coat pocket with his right hand, pulling out a clear zip seal bag with a card sealed inside of it with a fancy 'G' on it. "Understood; I will continue my investigation."

_And find the Traveler, Agent Looker. We will need him for this._ The line went dead.

Nonetheless, Looker replied with the customary "Understood, sir," before hanging up his cell phone and putting both it and the bag back inside his coat's inner pocket.

"…'The Traveler has been known to travel a lot'? Man, what is it with underlings and their need for redundancy?"

Startled, the man looked up. That voice was awfully familiar.

Though the voice was at a similar pitch to his own, the figure perched on the edge of the roof of the next car down was no man.

It was a young woman that looked no older than sixteen. She was dressed in slightly torn denim jeans, beat up sneakers, an olive green t-shirt that was fading in color, and long dark-brown hair that was pulled back into a very messy bun using several hair ties. A pair of surfer-style sunglasses hid her eyes, and an amused smirk adorned her face.

A face that the man knew. "Oh! Trave-mph!"

In what seemed like a blink of an eye, the man had his mouth covered by the young woman's hand.

'Fast!'

The woman glared at him from behind the shades. "Looker, unlike some people, I actually use my real name in public."

She put down her hand and let her smirk return. "It's actually quite fun. You should try it, sometime."

Looker felt a smirk of his own form. "I'll take your word for it, Traveler."

"Tch." The woman rolled her eyes behind her shades. "Fine. You do as you please. Like always."

"I do not always do as I please, Traveler." The agent looked slightly affronted. "Where did you get that idea?"

"How about when we first met? You were playing dress-up."

Looker looked positively scandalized. "I do **not** play-!"

"Or the time after that," she continued as though she was never interrupted. "When you decided to play hide-and-seek with a bunch of juvenile delinquents-"

"An assignment!" He objected. "I had to make sure that they were not in connection with any major criminal organization!"

She quirked an eyebrow. "And? Were they?"

Looker wilted slightly. "Well, no…"

The woman nodded, as though she was expecting that. "And then the time after that-"

Looker groaned. At this rate, she was going to recount every single one of their meetings.

"-When you felt the need to make a list of all my faults that you could find to your boss while I was standing not even five feet from you."

His eyes snapped back to her. "What?" When was that?

He scanned his memory to see what she could be referring to. He only found one that matched, but that was when-

"Oh!" Looker was hard pressed not to start chuckling. "Why, those were fondly meant, my lady!"

She looked at him in disbelief; she even pushed down her sunglasses to the tip of her nose so that her unusually colored eyes would be exposed. She did so because she wanted him to see what she thought of his excuse. "Is that so? You mean, like when you said that I suck at Slots?"

"A compliment!" he said in earnestness.

She blinked in surprise. Her eyebrow quirked upwards again. "That I 'can't reign in my temper to save my life?'"

"An endearment!" He smiled.

The eyebrow raised even higher. "That I never fail to 'blurt things out at the most inopportune times without a hint of remorse?'"

"An adoration!"

"That I make people feel like they're 'practically naked' when I look at them while wearing my sunglasses indoors?"

"A turn-on!" Once again, he responded with complete honesty.

She averted her gaze to the car's railing. "That I'm 'twig-limbed?'"

He opened his mouth, then closed it with an audible snap. He again suppressed his want to chuckle. "Oh, now there you have me, Traveler."

He threw her an amused grin. "I'm afraid you are indeed twig-limbed."

She flushed slightly and pushed back up her sunglasses with her middle finger. "Yeah, yeah. So what've you got?"

Looker, tactfully ignoring the rather rude gesture, reached back into his trench coat and withdrew the Ziploc bag with the "G" key card in it. "Here; this is the most solid lead we've had concerning this entire operation."

The woman let out another unladylike snort. "Right." With one swipe of her hand, the bag was in her possession. "Because my word just wasn't enough for you…"

"It never is," Looker said with a playful grin, which the woman mirrored.

Turning the card in her hand, the grin turned into a frown. "Grunt work. Had this been a job completed by the commanders, you would not have been able to find this. Or, at least, not as fast as you did today. They've grown sloppy."

"That, or they've grown overconfident," Looker pointed out. "Complacent. Arrogant in their belief that they will stand unopposed."

"My money's on all three."

"Sucker bet."

The frown twisted back into a wry grin as she handed back the bag. "Worth a try. Seems like I can never win when it comes to luck in my life, and that would've been a surefire bet."

"It would also be cheating," Looker cheerfully informed her. "You can't place a bet on every ponyta that runs in the race; you can only pick one."

"Does that really matter, right now?" The woman gestured around her. "It's not like I was serious, anyway."

Looker paused to look at the young woman, observing the not-so-subtle signals she was giving off. "You're not in the best of moods, right now, I see."

"No, really?" The woman gave him an 'Are-you-an-idiot' look. "Aside from the fact that the sudden stop earlier awoke me from my much-needed nap, your people still somehow insist that I'm a guy!"

The agent reached up to scratch one of his cheeks in a sheepish manner. "Right. That would be my doing."

The woman was not amused. "Why?"

Looker blinked. "You said you wanted anonymity…"

The woman did a very good impression of a stone statue for a moment.

"…I see. Thank you." She slowly turned around to walk to the door to the other train car.

"Where are you going, Traveler?"

She paused. "Back to the back of the train to finish my nap. I want to be better rested for when you 'run into me' in the next town so that you can take me to your leader, or however the regulations states."

Looker widened his eyes. "A-A-Are you sure?"

"Hey, you guys have finally caught on to what I've been seeing the whole time, and for once, you aren't too late to do anything about it." She turned and smiled at the older man. "If it means keeping my region safe, I can handle a few extra phone calls."

Her smile then dropped to a look of earnestness. "Besides, this is a time that we all need to be on the same page. With the Galactic Goobers on the move again, none of us can afford to be anything but, anymore. They're not likely to make the same mistakes as they did last time."

"Right," Looker gave her a single, curt nod of agreement. "We will stop them from getting too far. This is absolute."

She hummed in understanding and opened the door. "It's absolute because I'm no longer the only catalyst on the playing field."

She pointed her gaze at the door Looker had only recently exited out of. "A game of chess cannot be won with only one piece other than the king."

Looker turned his head to look through the small glass window on the door. Within the car, the young man with the dark skin said some off-handed comment. His two human companions, the girl with the beanie and the boy with the red and black hat started laughing. It was a calming sight.

Leaving the door open, the woman stood beside Looker. "Aside from the pawns and the queen, there's also the rook-" She directed her gaze to the boy with the red and black hat. "-The bishop-" Her gaze moved to the girl that was speaking to her piplup. "-And the knight." Her eyes stopped on the bronze-skinned young man sitting across from the other two.

"And you?"

A thoughtful look appeared on the woman's face for a while. Turning from the window, she smiled at the man beside her. "Who knows?"

The sound of the train moving hid the sound of her footsteps as she walked to the next car down, closing the door behind her.

She repeated this process many times, only stopping when she was at the very back of the train.

Spying her backpack, she slumped in the seat that held it and snuggled into it, trying to get as comfy as possible. Seeing as the contents within the bag made it so that it wasn't very comfortable to begin with, this took some time.

Finally finding an adequate position, she stopped moving around and instead watched the sunset.

She started slightly when she felt what seemed like a poke on her frontal lobe. In response, she reached down to her belt, selected a single pokeball from the six she had on her person, and pushed the button that allowed the ball to grow to the released state.

There was then a small pulse from the ball in her hand, and her aura felt the slightest of caresses brush against it. It was like fingers and the back of a hand brushing along her jaw line.

"Yeah, I know, son…" She, in turn, brushed her fingers across the enlarged ball capsule.

She continued to do so even as she looked out the window at the ever changing, ever moving landscape. "I am, too."

* * *

_Every story has to start someplace. Any writer can tell you as much. Heck, even people who aren't writers will tell you the same. _

_If a story does not have a start, then all one hears is someone talking about something that doesn't make much sense to us. Meaningless words. Waste of air. _

_This story has a place where it begins. _

_However, that place is not here. _

_This particular tale, which is very much true, began about five years prior to this moment. The same could be said of a similar tale; one that nearly everyone knows about. _

_That tale was about a boy who wanted to grow up to be the best there was, and the best that would ever be. That boy would somehow end up saving the world, in some way, at least twice a year. He would also find himself saving the day more times than anyone would care to count. The boy's life had purpose. His past was a welcome one. And he had a name that would one day be known and remembered by all. _

_This tale, however, is immensely different. It began without a purpose, without a past, and for a time, it began without a name. And unlike the boy's, almost no one knows about it. _

_But that's why you're here, right?_

_This is a tale about a girl who wanted to discover herself. And once that would be accomplished, she would then fade back into the background. Much to her annoyance, it appeared that the powers that be had other ideas. Instead of simplicity, which was what she wanted, she instead found herself preventing the eradication of this world's very existence. _

_This isn't what I wanted. _

_And yet, if I had the power to change what had happened, the power to go the easy way, I wouldn't. _

_Call me crazy, but it's the truth. _

_Two roads were before me; one was straight forward and the ending could be seen clearly, and the other twisted and turned with no definite end. _

_Looking back, I can see that the road I choose was the one that no one would expect me to take; the one that was less traveled by. _

_And that has truly made all the difference. _

_And, very soon, you too will see why. _


End file.
